Crony Capitalism
The President is busy creating jobs. In the current Weekly Standard , Andrew B. Wilson points out that President Obama proudly promised:
“ ..to spend as much as $2 billion to support creation of 1,585 ‘permanent’ jobs by two solar energy companies. That comes to a potential cost of over $1.25 million per job.”
That doesn’t strike me as a great deal for taxpayers. Wilson says the President displays:
“what the economist Friedrich Hayek called ‘fatal conceit’ or ‘the pretense of knowledge.’ If no one in the private sector is beating a path to the door of either one of these small and unheralded companies—to buy their products or invest in their technologies—what makes Obama and the Department of Energy so sure it’s wise to put $2 billion of the taxpayers’ money at risk on their behalf? And if President Obama has gone on a VIP tour of one or two solar panel or wind turbine factories, does that constitute real knowledge—or simply ‘the pretense of knowledge’?”
It’s the pretense of knowledge. How can Obama be so sure that his brief introduction to these companies outweighs the private sector’s accumulated knowledge and conscious disregard for them? But few power-hungry politicians question the right of the top politician…
“to commit huge sums of money for the creation of comparatively few jobs in favored industries. … to bet taxpayers’ money on unproven companies set up for the express purpose of pursuing government grants…they put public money at risk in the service of people who are out for private gain.”
And they like to keep it in the family.
“Russell Kanjorski, the vice president for marketing at Abound Solar, was one of the principals in another energy company in northeast Pennsylvania, called Cornerstone Technologies LLC, which attracted $9 million in federal grants before it halted operations in 2003 and later filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. As reported by the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, “Cornerstone reported $14,100 in assets compared with $1.34 million in debt” in its bankruptcy filing. The $9 million in federal grants to Cornerstone were earmarked by Kanjorski’s uncle, Representative Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises.
It is also worth noting that Nobel Laureate and former vice president Al Gore, who has accumulated a substantial fortune in the course of campaigning against global warming while investing in alternative energy and lecturing on the subject, has lent his name and support to Abengoa Solar and the parent company, Abengoa. The Spanish company’s stock jumped in November 2007 when an investment fund headed by Gore announced it was acquiring a stake in the company. (Abengoa also owns a biofuels business that is aligned in various ventures with BP, “the world’s first green petroleum company,” as it used to boast.”
There are two ways to get rich. You can actually create wealth with better management or a better idea, or you can use political connections. Sadly, big Government encourages the latter.
stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com |
